Adult-FanFiction.org : Games

Reins of the Tomb Raider	By : HunterOpera Category: +S through Z > Tomb Raider (all) > Tomb Raider (all) Views: 38203 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Tomb Raider and make no money from this. Also, this is not a happy story. It will not have a happy ending. You have been warned.

Chapter List
- 10
- 11
- 12
“I need you to do this for me,” James told us. He and I were eating dinner with Drasha, and she frowned over my wife's delicious cooking. Not at the food, but at his words. She reassured my wife that her cooking had nothing to do with her expression, even asked for a second helping to drive the point home. The rest of us quickly followed her lead, basking in Drasha's wisdom – I often thought that my wife's cooking was some of the greatest in all of Parmistan, a culinary sorcery that I could never hope to match.

“This is not wise,” Drasha said, pausing to chew and swallow. She pointed a fork at the Earl of Faringdon. “It is a difficult time for her.”

“Which is why it has to be now,” James said. He looked around for something none of us could guess at, his eyes glazed by some fever. Drasha looked over at me, but I did not know my dear friend's plan, only that I had learned to trust him from one winter to the next.

“I believe you should do this thing,” I said.

“You really should,” James added.

Reluctantly, Drasha agreed.

And so it was that the Croft woman's routine was broken. We watched on the cameras as she was taken from her stable, but today the stablehands did not molest her, only letting her void herself before they stripped her naked and cleaned her. Her flesh was tanned from a long summer that was fading into autumn. Still, the excercise had toned her already fine muscles and she looked lovely, even if she was covered in stripes, some fading and some fresh. She did not struggle when they dressed her in the orange clothing of a British prisoner, but her head remained bowed and her shoulders stayed slumped. It was a shame; her fine elegant features were untouched by the markings that covered the rest of her.

The clothing she now wore was something James had given to me, a recent gift sent to Parmistan for this very moment. A gift, James had said, from an old friend of his and a colleague of Lara's, a woman named Steph Missing.

Lara frowned but did not resist as they led her not to the track but rather indoors, to a room she had never seen before. We could see the curve of her lips, a frown of uncomprehension touching her face as she looked first down at her clothing and then the rest of the room. It was a sparse place, a ten foot cube with two chairs and one table. Something touched her then, recognition entering her eyes, somewhat of her old self coming forward through the fog of her lessons. We could see a glimmer of light enter the dull gloss her eyes had become.

She did not struggle as she was forced into a chair, her legs fastened to the floor, her hands bound by the wrists in front of her with a short chain giving her some small movement. She was then fastened to the chair by belts across her waist and along her shoulders, forced to sit straight.

After that she was left to wait. An hour passed. Two. James entered just before the third hour, when Lara was beginning to look around the room, when the expression on her face had retreated back towards dull compliance.

“What did you do, Lara?” James demanded. Lara looked up at him, shocked and about to answer, but he cut her off by slamming some official looking documents on the table. “Do you know what these are?”

Drasha looked at me. She did not know what they were.

I shrugged and folded my arms over my chest. Neither did I.

Lara tried to speak, but her voice was a rasping mess, her tongue used to licking and unused to forming words. I watched from outside the small room as James pretended not to notice.

“This was your release,” James continued. The expression on Lara's face in that moment was ecstatic – a light coming to her features, a gratitude that would have been pathetic had it not been so sincere. “Don't look so happy. You ruined everything.”

Lara blinked, starring, not understanding.

“When you attacked the guards, all these papers became null and void.” James threw them against the wall, pacing in front of the bound woman. He finally sat down in the empty chair in front of her and buried his head in his hands. “I know I'm not the man you wanted, Lara, but I needed you to trust me. I nearly had you free, and now I have to start all over again...”

Lara stared, then started to cry. He looked up at her, stood up and walked over to her, hugged her and stroked her hair... but did not undo any of her bonds.

“It's going to be okay, Lara,” he lied. “There might still be a way out of this.”

She sniffled and he cleaned her face, a small and intimate moment. Both Drasha and I looked away from them, giving my dear friend this moment of privacy.

“C-can,” Lara struggled to form the words. “C-can y-you un...” she trailed off, but pulled at her bonds. James shook his head.

“I can't,” James answered. “They'd lock me up, the same way they have you. I've done everything I can to free you from here, but there might be more I can do at home. Can you not ruffle anymore feathers until I get back?”

Lara frowned, but sighed and looked away from him and nodded her head as much as she was able. Her eyes glistened with tears. Again, my gentle friend dabbed her cheeks with a clothe, so careful in this small action.

“There's one more thing I need,” James said. He looked around the room, found what he was looking for. A folder had been mixed in with the other papers, and he retrieved it, took another paper from outside of its folds. “I'm going to be acting on your behalf back in Britain, Lara, and in order to do that I'm going to need power of attorney.”

She frowned at that, and so did I. What was my dear friend doing? Lara tried to ask a question, but her words melted in her mouth and dripped off her tongue, nonsense sounds that James pretended to understand.

“I need to prove to people I'm speaking on your behalf,” James told her. “I've done everything I can here, but with power of attorney I can call on your resources as well as my own. I might be able to get you out of here for the spring, if I leave now and avoid getting trapped her by winter.”

A half hour passed before Lara was ready to sign. James put the pen in her hand and she frowned at it. They used other papers, the two of them, until Lara's handwriting looked like her own again. Only then did James have her sign the contract. Then, for good measure, James took a thumbprint before taking both pen and paper from her.

“I'm so sorry this is happening to you, Lara,” James said. She looked up at him, hope shining in her eyes. “Stay strong. I'll be back for you as soon as I'm able.”

He walked out of the room, then, and down the hall to where Drasha and I were waiting.

“She responded to her own name four times,” James told Drasha, his voice cold. “Go and teach her that her name does not belong to her.” Drasha offered him a wicked smile before she sauntered out the door, her stablehands waiting for her, but I could only look at my dear friend and wonder what he was thinking.

“Are you truly going to try and free her?” I asked. “What were those papers?”

“Except for the contract she signed? Random things I printed off the internet,” my dear friend answered. “She's a criminal, Zamir, and I intend to let her suffer the punishment that she deserves.”

“You are not leaving?”

“Winter is coming, my friend,” he said, clasping me on the back. “I would not abandon the country of my soul, even if my aid is a small thing in comparison to your own might.”

“Then why the charade?”

“I wanted her to sign this,” he said, holding up the piece of paper, the power of attorney. “I need you to sign, here and here.”

I did as he requested, and he did a little jig around the room, giggling the whole time.

“Do you understand what I've done?” he asked. I shook my head. “I now have access to all her bank accounts. Her holdings and properties. You gave me her body because of the crimes she committed, my dear friend, but now I've taken everything else. All her money. Her home. Everything she was. Even if she does escape, she has nothing to go back to.”

“And you have made her think that all she has to do is wait to be set free,” I breathed, looking at my friend in awe. I clasped him on the back, impressed by his ingenuity. “She will stop fighting, believing that you are going to rescue her.”

“Not only that,” James sniggered, “she now believes that she would be free already if she hadn't tried to escape. She's going to blame herself for everything Drasha does to her.”

Lara's screams echoed down the hallway, proof that Drasha was reminding the Croft woman that she did not own her name – and now that James had enacted his plan, she would not own anything at all.

*

Well, that went quicker than expected. I'll try and have another chapter up this week, but no promises - I've got a busy weekend coming up, so we might be waiting til Monday or Tuesday for the next bit. In the meantime, if you've got questions or comments, I reply to them everything here: http://www2.adult-fanfiction.org/forum/index.php/topic/36931-metroid-the-bergman-affair-feedback-comments-and-workshopping/page-9 I'll also reply to any and all reviews in that same space. Just copy/pasta the link. Hope you're enjoying reading this as much as I am writing it, and thanks for reading.
- 10
- 11
- 12
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Reins of the Tomb Raider